A Degree in Life, Earned in Classrooms With No Walls

What use is sport? Why defer your studies and waste the years? Why wake before the light to lose more than you win? Why choose a life of tin cups and inadequate earnings?

- Rohit Brijnath

Most Singaporean athletes just shrug. They've heard a version of these whys. Sometimes they are questions with concern, sometimes they are just patronizing. And maybe they're just too tired after practice to explain the university they go to, the one of almost no off-days, where the field is the classroom, and tests come daily, and the marking is harsh, and the lessons are in character building (try losing in front of thousands of people).

But if you'd like to get a glimpse of this education, go to any field, gym or pool. Or go and meet Danelle Tan. Age: 20. Chosen course: Football. Many students take the bus from their Singapore estate to class, she's journeyed to London, Dortmund, Brisbane and now Tokyo to study. Most students learn in English, she has to master football while speaking German, Strine and now Japanese.

What do we want for our children? Experience, surely. To taste the world. To appreciate hardship. To be independent and wander. Tan goes to Brisbane Roar, gets injured and requires surgery in the first week of her season which "kills her momentum", for the team's playing well and it's hard to force her way in.